I have my own thoughts about abortion analogies (the analogy to slavery, for example, strikes me as ironic, given the Church's participation in that institution, and its ambiguous position on abolition during the ante-bellum period). But the suggestion to use the Spanish Civil War as an analogy comes close to self-parody. More to the point, the account of the Spanish Republic offered in the ND student's email to Rob Vischer merits at least some challenge. The student said:
In both cases you have groups of private individuals intent on wreaking
violence on a particular group in society (Catholics and the unborn);
in both cases the government refuses protection to the targeted group
and implicitly supports the violence while issuing occassional
platitudes about it being unfortunate; and in both cases startlingly
large numbers of the targeted group are killed. Also in both cases the
violence had political benefits and dimensions for the perpetrators and
the government protecting them.
This is a common claim by those attempting to (1) soft-pedal the atrocities of the Franco regime and/or (2) explain widespread Catholic support for the Spanish rebels. I think the account that the student gives certainly describes Catholic perception in the United States during the civil war, but, as I read the history, the destruction of churches and slaying of priests in Republican Spain did not begin until after the beginning of the nationalist uprising, not "immediately prior," as the student suggested. And, in fact, the repression of the Church was in part a consequence of the chaos sparked by that uprising. Here is the description by LSE historian Paul Preston:
Of course, the atrocities were not confined to the rebel zone. At the beginning of the war, particularly, there were waves of assassinations of priests and suspected Fascist sympathizers. Militia units set themselves up to purge their towns of known rightists and especially churchmen. Churches and religious monuments were destroyed. More than six thousand priests and religious were estimated to have been murdered. Falangists and yellow unions were favourite targets of the spontaneous checas, or pseudo-secret police units, set up by various left-wing gropus, particularly the anarchists. In part, this was the consequence of the fact that the military coup had provoked a collapse in the structures of law and order that, in turn permitted an outburst of revolutionary optimism in the midest of which the prisons in the Republican zone had been emptied of common criminals. Some of the groups that carried out the grisly work of repression, such as the self-styled Brigadas de Investigacion Criminal, under the leadership of the sinister Agapito Garcia Atadell, were driven by greed and bloodlust rather than any political motivation. . . If there was a differenc ein the kllings in the two zones, it lay in the fact that the Republican atrocities tended to be the work of uncontrollable elements at a time when the forces of order had rebelled, while those committed by the Nationalists were officially condoned by those who claimed to be fightingt in the name of Christian civilization.
On the nationalist side, there was, from the beginning of the uprising, a deliberate use of mass execution to spread terror among the working classes in order to prevent any challenge to the nationalist cause, even in parts of Spain that the nationalists had taken without any bloodshed. Here's Preston again:
In the Catholic heartlands, where the rising had enjoyed instant success, blood soon started to flow with the blanket repression of Republicans of all kinds. It was not just the region's relatively few anarchists, Communists and Troskyists who were rounded up and shot, but also moderate Socialists and centre-left Republicans. General Mola's conviction that terror behind the lines would play a crucial role was harshly revealed when he called a meeting of all the alcaldes of the province of Pamplona and told them: 'It is necessary to spread terror. We have to create the impression of mastery eliminating without scruples or hesitation all those who do not think as we do. There can be no cowardice. If we vacillate one moment and fail to proceed with the greatest determination, we will not win. . .' Those who claimed to be rising in defence of law and order and of eternal Catholic values inaugurated a savage purge of leftists and Freemasons which was to leave a smouldering legac y of hatred in the area for more than forty years. . . . The scale of terror and repression in those areas which had been easily won by the rebels made it clear that their objective was not simply to take over the state but to exterminate an entire liberal and reforming culture.
Estimates of non-combatants killed put the numbers at 55,000 on the republican side (including the 6000 priests and religious mentioned above), while the numbers on the nationalist side are harder to come by, due to decades of silence on the issue within Franco's Spain, but reliable estimates tend to range from 150,000 to 200,000. Many of those killed by the nationalists were killed summarily, or after trials lasting just a few minutes, for "crimes" such as supporting FDR, reading Locke or Rousseau, or being a Freemason.
Though the balance of killings of civilians tips in favor of the nationalists by a factor of three, neither side comes off looking good in most histories of the Spanish Civil War. A bloody civil war in which Catholics by and large favored the perpetrators of countless horrifying atrocities because the other side had committed similar, though less numerous, atrocities against Catholics and priests? The notion of holding up that tragic conflict as an analogy for the cause of
abortion strikes me as dubious, unless the goal is to highlight the
moral intractability of the abortion debate. If, however, the goal is to seek a rhetorically powerful analogy that conveys moral clarity, I think the pro-life cause might want to go in a different direction.
There has been quite a bit of discussion, on this and other Catholic blogs, about the use (and misuse) of "culture war" talk, about the accuracy of such talk, about whether it is possible (absent surrender on moral questions of importance) to leave behind such talk, etc. Against the backdrop of this conversation, take a few minutes to read this post, by Ross Douthat.
Now, I tend to think that some calls (not all, of course, but some) for "let's put the culture wars" -- childish things? -- "behind us" are, really, calls for "please stop arguing with me on the serious matters about which we disagree, and just agree that I win." That said, Douthat raises (and quotes others who raise) an interesting possibility -- could reversing Roe (rather than giving up on its reversal) actually be the better path toward less rancorous politics? He writes:
Overturning Roe, then, would have a double effect on pro-lifers - it would simultaneously remove the alienating impact of a legal regime that tries to read our views out of the political debate entirely, and enable us to put our theories about American public opinion on abortion and what kind of legal restrictions are possible to the test. Whether this would de-escalate the abortion wars in the long run is obviously hard to say. I suspect that the Linker thesis is correct, and that a short-term spasm of abortion politicking would give way to greater calm on the issue; certainly, I imagine that I would personally feel a lot calmer about the issue if it were de-constitutionalized, whether or not doing so led to the kind of legal gains that I think pro-lifers can reasonably hope for. But there's no way to know for sure.
I think he's onto something. I know that, during the run-up to the last election, I often expressed my view that the (incorrect) constitutionalization of a broad abortion license, which not only rests on a premise about personhood that many people quite reasonably reject, but also (as Douthat says) implicitly expels from the conversation these many people, is what is most objectionable about the current reality; more so, really, than the fact (which, I am sure, will always be with us) that abortion would, even absent Roe, remain, in many places and cases, legal.
This should be very interesting. Get thee to Atlanta! For our own Michael S.'s First Things essay, which constituted his contribution to the debate referenced in the length, go here.
On the topic of the language we use to describe legalized abortion (see, e.g., here, here, here, here, here, here, and here) a reader writes:
In my opinion, there is a Gresham's law of language in which the attempt to inappropriately exploit the connotative power of a word has the opposite effect of diluting its ability to convey any meaning at all. What's more, since most people do not believe that the intentional killing of a 12 year old child and the act of abortion are morally equivalent, the unintended result is not only to debase the word, but to reduce the speaker's credibility as well -- just as we would look down on someone trying to pass off counterfeit goods.
UPDATE: Another reader responds:
It may be the case that calling abortion a "holocaust" or some other similar term reduces a pro-life advocate's effectiveness, but that does not mean that such a term does not reflect reality. Take an example: holding up large pictures of aborted children may churn some onlookers stomach's and cause them to disengage from the issue rather than confront it. But the reality of in what abortion results is no less accurate. Reality is not defined by the reaction people have to those who speak facts. I think we should be clear on just what we are debating. Is it "These terms don't help" vs "Yes they do" or the much different debate of "These terms do not reflect reality" vs. "Yes they do"?
Can we so easily separate reality from effectiveness, though? After all, when we're talking about analogies, we're not talking about literal reality. Legalized abortion is not the Holocaust. If we want to call it the Holocaust, isn't that decision motivated, in significant part, by our perception of persuasive similarities?
For those interested, I'll be helping Rick wave the MoJ flag by spending the month of February at the always entertaining (at least until I showed up) PrawfsBlawg.
